Just A Girl
by A-Violet-Drop-of-Jupiter
Summary: This is the story of one of the girls who manages to get into Battle School. She's a bit of an underdog and it doesn't help that on top of being the only girl in her launch group, she's also one of the smartest. She's not as brilliant as Ender or Bean.
1. Space Cadet

**"She passed. You were right; she's brilliant. She didn't test as high as Wiggin or that Bean kid, but her scores are pretty high up there."**

**"When are they bringing her into space?"**

**"Neal is going to get her later today. Huh…"**

**"What?"**

**"Is it just me or is it a bit odd that we're now some of our former teacher's bosses? I mean, we're still in school and they're asking us for advice on who to bring up into space."**

**"Yeah, it's a bit odd. Still, if we lived on Earth, adults would tell us to shut our mouths if we tried to advise them. Here, they not only accept that we're geniuses, they also ask for our assistance."**

**"Nice to feel needed."**

**"Yeah. I'll see you around; I've got more geniuses to find."**

"Nyx." She sat up in her top bunk. Oh. It was just Makayla. Makayla was only four, but she was already smarter than the average nine year old, which was why she had gotten a monitor, like the one Nyx had had for about two years now. Normally Makayla smiled constantly, but she looked scared. Something was up.

"What's wrong, Kayla?" She yawned, rubbing her eyes.

"There's a man from the I.F. here. The mom and dad persons are talking to him in the living room. I heard them mention your name."

Nyx sat up straight, not remotely sleepy anymore. That probably meant they wanted to take her to Battle School. Finally they had decided she was their ideal candidate. Suddenly Kayla burst into tears.

"Nyx, you can't go! I don't want you to go!" She cried, flinging her arms around her older sister. The two of them were close, as there was only a year and a half in between them. "Paige already is gone; I don't want you to leave too to become a space cadet!" Nyx hugged her back starting to cry.

"Kayla, stop crying. You're making me cry. Maybe the I.F. will want you too and I'll be able to see you in a year or two. You're just as brilliant as Paige and I. I think they're going to want you too."

"A year or two! That seems like forever (which is all relative)! And anyway, I bet they try to keep siblings as far apart as possible. It probably keeps them too attached." She was probably right, which caused both of them to start sobbing.

The door opened. It was their mother and her face was tear streaked. "Yes, I am definitely going to Battle School," Nyx thought. "There's no other reason the mom person would have been crying."

"Nyx, come here. I need you to meet someone. You can come too, Makayla." She added. The two girls climbed down from the top bunk and Nyx took Kayla's hand and followed her mother out of their room and downstairs, still in her nightgown. Even though she accepted the idea that she was going to Battle School, it still scared her. She wouldn't see her family for a very long time, "Although," She mused. "I might get used to that. That's a bit scary. I might even forget about them, an even scarier idea."

The girls' father was standing in the living room with a man from the I.F. They had been talking but had stopped when Nyx and Makayla entered.

"Nyx, Makayla, sit down," Said their father. They sat down on the couch, Kayla still scared that she would lose her sister, Nyx nervous about going to Battle School. "Girls, this is Captain Neal. Captain Neal, my daughters."

"Hello. As I've already told your parents, Nyx has been accepted to Battle School." Said Neal.

"I already knew that. Kayla told me you were here and I knew immediately why you were here." She said, looking directly at him.

"Not surprising. I would tell you if Makayla had passed also, but I don't know her results and if I did, she wouldn't be going to Battle School for another year. Now, if everyone would excuse us, I would like to talk to Nyx about whether or not she wants to go."

"You mean our daughter might be able to stay with us?" Said her mother, looking slightly happier.

"Probably not. Now please." Nyx's mother picked up Kayla, who had been sitting stubbornly on the couch like she was refusing to move from Nyx's side, and walked out. Her father ruffled her auburn hair and left.

"Whether or not I want to go, huh? Do you really expect me to believe that I have a choice in this matter? You must have seen my scores; you should know that while I am barely six, I think like an adult. I know that I'm going to Battle School whether or not I want to because the I.F. needs another Mazer Rackham. I don't think that's me, but I am not in the military so I think differently than you lot do."

"You do have a choice-" She rolled her eyes at him. "But it's not what you think it is. You have the choice to go to Battle School and be iced because you were an apathetic soldier or you can go to Battle School and be a great commander and maybe get to command a piece of the Fleet when you're older."

"Some choice. That's not really a choice, that's a threat."

"Take it as you will. We still prefer volunteers. So what's your answer?"

"I'm going. I highly doubt I will ever be in a command position because I don't trust you to tell the truth, but I'm still going."

He smiled. "Good choice. Now, you can go and say goodbye to your family. Unless Makayla makes it, you won't see any of them for a long time." She stood up and walked out of the room.

"You're going, right?" Kayla said.

"Yeah. The ba- I mean idiot, didn't really give me a choice. But it doesn't matter; I'd go even if he gave me a choice. You know why I'm going cause you're going to go for the same reason. I'll see you in a year or so." She hugged Kayla and tried to keep herself from crying. Kayla cried again and hugged her back. "Bye Mom." She forced herself to smile, which only made her mother burst into tears. "Crud," she thought, as her mother hugged and kissed her. "I made her cry."

"Nyx, you behave yourself and come back a great leader." Said her father. He picked her up and swung her around, then put her back on the ground and kissed her.

"Come on, Nyx, it's time to leave." Said Neal, opening the front door for her. She walked out and he followed behind her out to the car. Another man from the I.F., who had been standing outside, opened a door to the backseat for her and Nyx climbed in. The I.F. man sat down in the other seat in the back and shut the door. Neal climbed into the driver's seat and started the car. Nyx waved to her family, who had come outside, as Neal pulled out of their driveway and drove to where she supposed was the airport.

"Space cadet," She thought. "That's what Paige would call me. And not in a nice way either." Paige was brilliant and had passed the tests to get into Battle School so long ago that her first visit home, before she went to Command School, was when she was sixteen and Nyx had been four.

"Kayla probably doesn't remember her, which might be good. Paige is nice but gets very cynical and sarcastic if you get her on the subject of the military. I wonder what happened to her that made her hate the I.F. so much. The only bad thing they've done to me is lie and adults have been doing that to me for years. But my elder sister has already been through Battle School, so she knows way more about it then I do. Maybe I should have gone with the first option." But somewhere in her nature there was aggression and the will to fight. She knew that. She had passed. Paige had it, but one day would use it against the I.F. Maybe Nyx would join her in that fight. Who knew?

"Nyx, we're going to the doctor's. We're going to have your monitor removed. We don't need it anymore. The doctor will explain more about it when we get there." Said Neal, turning on the highway.

"After that, we're going to the airport, then wherever the shuttle is being launched?"

"Correct."

"How many other kids will be in my launch group?"

"I don't know. But almost all of them are boys. There are three other girls besides you."

"Now that's odd," Nyx thought. "His eyes broke contact with mine in the mirror for a second when he said there were three other girls. Something's up."


	2. Two Friends and an Enemy

**brilliantstarhunter: Sending me on a new hunt. I'm still allowed to watch my picks as they go through Hell, I mean battle school, and I can observe my newest pick but**

**searchingthecosmos: They said move on; don't obsess. Told me that when I paid too much attention to one of my kids. **

**brilliantstarhunter: Yeah. I hope at least one of my picks will make it to command. One of mine is getting ready to get on a shuttle. Her thing's being taken out right now.**

**searchingthecosmos: Are you watching that, you sick freak? What are you, a lesbian and a masochist and a pedophile! **

**brilliantstarhunter: Ick, no. They didn't mess up my head that much. Besides, there's enough hiding place here to have fun with guys. I'm never going to get that desperate.**

**searchingthecosmos: They need to bring more girls up here. Sure, a boy majority is great for the girls up here cause you all have a great selection, but for us guys who don't have any girls to**

**brilliantstarhunter: Alright, I get it. Poor you. Hey, you using a sim right now?**

**searchingthecosmos: Nah. Not using one for another hour.**

**brilliantstarhunter: Me neither. Wanna go hang around the hallways like an Earth-side teen?**

**Searchingthecosmos: Let me finish up reading a kid's tests. I'll be in your hall in about 5 minutes.**

"This won't hurt. Afterward, you might think something's missing but it will only be your monitor." The doctor smiled and stuck a needle into the monitor on the back of Nyx's neck. She gasped and blacked out for a second.

"God. Where am I?" she thought, looking around. She saw the doctor putting away the needle and remembered that she was in a doctor's office and they had taken out the monitor. "Oh yeah, I'm going to Battle School. Finally."

"Is she ready to go, or does she have to stay here for a bit?" A man. An I.F. man. A captain or something like that. Neal. That was his name.

"She seems to be okay, but just to be on the safe side she should be kept here for at least ten minutes," the doctor told Neal. "When does the shuttle leave?"

"At about 7. That's why I grabbed her before she had breakfast. The last time she ate was last night at 7. Convenient, no?"

"Convenient, how?" Nyx thought, drifting off to sleep for some reason.

"Why didn't you just not feed her today and put her on a shuttle tomorrow?"

"We've got things planned for her. We couldn't wait until tomorrow. It would…" That was the last she heard before completely fell asleep.

Twelve hours later, Nyx had had her nightgown taken away and had been given a one-piece uniform. It was baggy, but comfortable. If they were going to dress them like this all the time, it wouldn't be a problem.

"But," she thought as she boarded the shuttle. "I don't see any other girls. Maybe they chopped their hair off shorter than mine." They had cut her hair off and now it was chin length instead of shoulder. She eyed a few of the more feminine looking boys. No, they were definitely boys. Which meant that her launch group had no girls, something that would ostracize her from the rest of the group.

She sat down in a seat and stared at the wall of the shuttle, mad at Neal. She found the seat's buckle and strapped herself in.

"That jackass. He lied. Other girls in my launch group my ass." She thought, only half noticing that someone had taken the seat next to her.

"Hello. I'm Colin." Said the boy, clicking his buckle.

"Hi. I'm Nyx. Where-" she turned around and looked straight into his pink eyes. Her sentence died. Colin's white face broke into a grin; either he was very friendly or had been expecting her reaction.

"You're albino, right?"

"Yes. It's nice that you caught on so quickly. I expect everyone here will be bloody well able to tell. Unless they're all a load of prats." His odd vocabulary and extreme lack of color was too much for her on a very empty stomach.

"Prats?" she inquired politely.

"Ah, sorry. Shouldn't have expected to you know that. A prat is a gormless person. Oh bugger that; you won't get that either."

"The alien Buggers, right?"

Colin's smile faded and he covered his eyes with a white hand.

"Americans. You lot know so bloody little," he sighed, then brightened up, taking his hand off his eyes. "I know! I'll teach you how to talk like a proper Brit!" He started laughing. Nyx laughed too; it was contagious.

The takeoff was a bit rough. Nyx got bounced around against her seat the whole time. Finally, they escaped the Earth's atmosphere and suddenly the only thing holding her down was the seat belt. All sense of direction disappeared. A few kids gagged and looked like they would throw up if they had anything to hurl. Nyx smiled as she watched Colin's white hair float around. His hair was rather long compared to the other boys; in fact it was about as long as her hair. She wondered why they hadn't cut it short like the other boys'. Still. Null-g was fun. She had a feeling she had a halo of auburn hair around her head.

"Alright, kiddies," said Neal, climbing up into the shuttle. "I hope everyone's buckled in. The pilot doesn't want to clean your brains off of his shuttle. I doubt any of you were smart enough to figure out that you need to stay buckled in," Many clicks sounded throughout the area. "For those of you who seem to need written directions for simple activities, you won't be getting them anymore. I know all of your scores and I know exactly how smart you are, which for some of you isn't saying much."

Nyx rolled her eyes. Neal was an ass. Nothing he did would ever convince her otherwise. She hoped that when Kayla got sent up here, he wasn't the military person sent with her launch group.

Colin seemed like he was on the verge of cracking up again. Nyx hoped he wouldn't because then she would and it didn't seem like a good time to. Besides Neal might be a complete ass to Colin if he noticed. Colin was her first friend here, or she hoped he was, and she didn't want some idiotic military bum picking on him.

Neal spotted Colin and walked over.

"Oh no. Damn you Neal." She thought.

"What's so funny, Jenkins?" Colin tried to wipe the laughter off of his face, but too late. He looked like he was trying to decide what reply to give him.

"You, sir. You know perfectly well that all of us have above average intelligence and yet you're treating us like a bunch of prats. Some of us probably have higher IQs than you do." He must have gone with the smart-ass approach.

"Some of you, yes. But obviously not you. The girl next you has an IQ higher than me. That's right; a girl showed all of you up. I doubt that that'll change anytime soon." Nyx glared at him. The idiot. Trying to completely isolate her

"Oh thank you so much for doing this," she thought sarcastically. "Now I should have no friends."

"Oh wait, pardon me. There's one boy who managed to equal her scores, as unlikely as that seems. Mr. Thomas, could you please raise your hand so you can get the recognition you deserve?" A dark haired boy in the back raised his hand, a confused expression on his face. "These two will probably be in a nice, high up position in the I.F. while the rest of you are still in Command School, if you can make it there. And do humanity a favor and don't beat on the kid next to you. They might be the one to beat the Buggers, especially if you're sitting next to Mr. Thomas or our only girl. Have a fun flight, kiddies." He climbed back down to his seat.

And that's when the chaos started.

"Hey, girl, you think you're better than us? You think you're smarter?" said the boy sitting behind her. He kept poking her in the head, which was getting annoying. But she refused to answer him to tell him to stop it.

Suddenly Colin pinned the boy's arm against her seat. The boy yelped, but Colin hung on.

"Bloody idiot, she didn't ask for him to set her up like that. If you're mad that a girl's smarter than you, get used to it. My older brother says that girls are so smart that we try to treat them like scum to make ourselves feel intelligent."

"Oh yeah? Well your brother's wrong, ghost boy." The boy grabbed a handful of Colin's hair with his other hand and pulled. Colin yelled and dug his nails into the boy's hand.

"Call me 'ghost boy' again and I swear I'll beat your bloody brains out the instant I get off this thing." Colin growled.

"Stop it! What are you guys, four! Colin, let go of his hand and whoever you are, let go of his hair." Colin obliged, but the boy still held onto his hair.

"Listen, you prat, would you mind letting go of my hair? It's bloody annoying."

"Just because you listen to girls doesn't mean I do. What is she, your girlfriend?" The boy smiled maliciously.

"Well, she's a girl and she's my friend. I guess technically that would make her my girl friend."

"Look, you, if you're not going to let go of his hair, I'm going to have to hurt you." Nyx glared at him. The whole thing with Neal had driven her over the edge. She had been separated from Kayla, they hadn't fed her and she had a hunger headache, she still felt weird from them taking out her monitor, Neal had picked on her just to separate her from everyone else even more, and now this.

"Oh I'm just terrified. The little girl's gonna hurt me." He faked a shiver. Nyx blinked and grabbed a chunk of his skin between two of her nails. She dug into it as hard as she could.

"Let. Go. Now. I have a headache and don't feel like dealing with you." The boy let go of Colin's hair and Nyx released his skin.

"Oh good, he's bleeding," She thought happily. "Now maybe he'll leave me alone."

"God, you girls never fight clean." He scowled and disappeared behind the back of Nyx's chair.

Another boy's head appeared behind Colin's chair five minutes later. He looked exactly like the boy who had just been bothering them. Same black hair, same freckles, and same blue eyes. How odd. Obviously the same boy was trying to bother them again.

"I'm sorry about my brother." He said.

Both Colin and Nyx blinked.

"Brother? What brother?" asked Nyx.

"My brother, Erik. He was just bothering you. We're twins and somehow both of us managed to get in. We're identical in every way, except he's much more competitive than me. I'm Nathan, by the way. Sorry my brother's was being an ass." He actually looked sincere. Nyx and Colin told him their names. They talked about their families and how they had gotten in. They whistled when she said that she had two sisters.

"How do you have two? Is your younger sister an illegal Third?" asked Nathan.

"Nope. My mom was married before she met my dad. Paige is from that marriage. The government let my mom and dad have two children together, but they think it's only because Paige was so brilliant and then they started testing me too. They wanted as many brilliant kids as they could get. I think Makayla might join me up here in a year or two. Paige should be out of Command soon."

"Wow," breathed Colin. "Were your parents in the I.F.?"

"Nope. Just my half-sister and now me and Makayla." She stared at the wall.

"We're the brilliant girls who they want to do their 'dirty work', like all the kids here, as Paige put it in her last letter. She was not too happy that the I.F. wanted us. But… I think she's going to use Kayla and me eventually. Maybe it's not going to be as bad here as she said it was. She's so bitter. Mom said being in the military does different things to different people. I don't think I want it to do that to me too." She thought, as the shuttle landed. Still, it was nice to have made two friends, even if the twin of one of them was certainly going to be their enemy.


	3. Another Girl

To those who have left reviews for me: Thank you so much! I'm so happy that people like this story. :Hugs the nice people who left reviews: Anyway, I wish more people would leave reviews. I like getting reviews. Even if all you want to do is give constructive criticism, please leave a review. I even read the anonymous ones.

Thank you to teh editors (that sounds so professional): Goldeye, Maris, and my boyfriend. You lot rock sometimes. This is one of them. But don't let it go to your heads, okay?

Oh yeah, just so you people know, almost all of the characters are my invention. I love them all. Even the enemies I made for Nyx. Meef. I feel a bit guilty. But hey, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. I always seem to put my characters in bad situations, though. But they're tough so they'll survive. Especially Makayla. Things will be interesting when she goes up in space. But that's all I'll say about that right now. Hehehe.

**"She's the only girl in her launch group. And you still told them to use the separation technique? Was that really necessary?"**

**"Maybe. It wasn't my decision entirely, anyway."**

**"Maybe? Maybe? Is that all you can say about this! If you really wanted to isolate her, you should have taken her up here without any other kids! She's going to have a hard enough time surviving in the military world. You know perfectly well that even though the I.F. says they're not sexist, they still don't make women commanders, no matter how brilliant they are."**

**"You know why that happens."**

**"No crap. Neither me nor the other four girls from our launch have gotten a command position. I feel so unchallenged."**

**"Oh shut up. You're just still mad that even though you're one of the best students here, they never gave you an army at Battle School and they didn't graduate you early with the best, which I admit they should have."**

**"What do you have, air in your head? This isn't about me."**

**"Yes it is. You see every act of sexism as personal insult."**

'The Girl'. She was really starting to dislike that title. It had gotten old really fast over the two weeks she had been here. It wasn't her fault that she had been the only girl in her launch group. If she had been able to pick which group she had gone up with, there would have been other girls. She had been furious that he had purposely made the other Launchies hate her. They knew that she was the only girl and would be isolated anyway. The boy with the highest scores, poor bastard, was a brilliant strategist and had a brilliant mind, but wasn't too good at psychology so he had had no idea why they were doing that to him. It didn't matter anyway; the whole separation thing hadn't worked with him and would never work with him because his personality naturally drew people to him. She, however, was not like that. Out of about twenty children in her launch, she was still friends with just Nathan and Colin. She knew more about everyone than they thought she did. She sat and watched everyone when they weren't paying attention. For example, there was Pascal. Great soldier and pretty intelligent, but not a good tactician. If she got to be a toon leader later, which she was starting to doubt that would happen, and he was in her toon, she'd know exactly how to use him. And then there was Mick. He was so good at physics and astrophysics, but his aim was horrible. Someone needed to teach him to shoot properly. And yet in the Battle Room, he was picked faster than she was. And her shot was much, much better. _It isn't fair_, she thought, knowing she sounded like a whiney brat. She fiddled with her food, not really interested in eating.

Even more frustrating was that she hadn't seen another girl here. Though she used the bathroom that all the girls, no matter how old they were or how inconvenient it was to walk to it, used, she hadn't seen any one else use it. She was starting to think that the girls here had all graduated. Although, she had seen one older kid in the hall who looked like he could be a girl. But there was a mark on his uniform that she knew meant that he was a commander and she was so cynical that she had immediately decided that he had to be a boy.

A boy who looked about eight put their tray on her table. She looked up at him.

"It's okay if I sit here, neh?" He said. Before she could even say, "I guess", he sat down, chin length black hair swinging in front of his face.

"You do know that I'm the only girl, which is why no one's sitting with me." She pointed out. Might as well get that out of the way. It was a half lie; if Colin and Nathan weren't taking their showers currently they'd be sitting with her. But nobody else would.

"See, that's the problem with keeping you Launchies away from the rest of us; you get these silly ideas." He put a forkful of whatever was for dinner in his mouth and gazed at her with green eyes that slanted at the corners.

"So you be saying that there are other girls? I've never seen any others in the bathroom." She said.

"Yeah, there are other girls. There's about a dozen or maybe two dozen, but some of the better-known ones are Petra, who's almost twelve, Wu, or Woo, who's in Dragon, and me. Cornelia Ai. We're just not in the bathroom very often." She grinned.

"Wait you're a girl?" Nyx's brown eyes got huge with shock.

"Yeah. They make us keep our damn hair as short as the boys so we can't get injured by some ass wrapping our nice, long braids around something in the Battle Room. And it also makes us look like all the idiots here." Cornelia stabbed something on her plate.

"Oh. So that's why your hair be only chin length?"

"You thought you be the only girl with hair that short, Launchie?" Cornelia grinned. She wasn't using Launchie as an insult.

"I thought I be the only girl not graduated. I guess I was wrong."

"You most certainly were. We haven't all graduated yet," She paused for a few seconds so she could eat some more of her dinner. "Where did you come from?"

"The U.S."

"Screwed up area. My dad was a diplomat to Japan, where he met my mom. They fell in love and he refused to leave Japan. So that's where my brother and I were born. What are you best at?"

Nyx looked confused. Was she talking about the Battle Room or in general?

"I mean what tests did you score highest on?"

"Oh. I had the highest scores on all the psychology tests. And second highest on most of the intelligence ones. There was a boy who had the highest scores on all the intelligence tests and I'm guessing he did pretty well on the command parts of the tests because even though Neal singled out him and me, he be friends with all the launchies." She filled Cornelia in on what had happened on the shuttle.

"Asses. But yeah, that kid definitely got high scores on the command bits. What about you?"

"I dunno. I might have. I know how I would use every single launchy but I don't think I would ever get the opportunity to command. I'm a girl."

"If you really be good at command, they'll make you a commander, whether they want to or not. Petra used to be the scum and scapegoat of Salamander, but now she's got her own army. The girl's brilliant. If you're like that, they'll give you an army."

"What about you? What makes you so well known?"

Cornelia laughed and took another bite of her food. When she was done chewing she said, "Well, I'm one of the few girls here. That automatically makes me infamous. I've got the most accurate shot in my army, Ferret, but sometimes that isn't saying much. My standings aren't as high as they used to be; after Dragon army was recreated, the highest I've been on the damn rankings is thirtieth. The first seventeen slots are filled by members of Dragon."

"Santa merda. They really are good." Nyx said. It was one of the first phrases in Portuguese she had learned here. Holy shit. All the kids here had such lovely vocabularies. And nobody used correct grammar. She had gotten used to being lazy about her language fast.

"Santa merda is right. None of them had been good before Ender got them. He's famous here. But don't expect to meet him; he's so smart they'll probably graduate him soon," she gazed into space a bit, then came back to reality. "Do me a favor. There aren't enough girls here in command positions. Maybe eventually I'll get one; I'm a better commander than some of the idiots who are in charge here. I don't know. But you better beat those shit for brains in your launch group in everything. Prove to them girls are just as good soldiers and commanders as boys. I'm not worried about you needing to prove you're smarter; everyone knows girls are smarter. I'll help you out if you need it. Comprende?" She stared hard at Nyx.

"Je comprends." Nyx's aunt had taught her that bit of French for no real reason.

"Good. You got Battle Room practice tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

"You busy during free time?"

"No. I don't like the games on my laptop."

"Okay. I'm gonna teach you how to be the best fighter in your group starting tomorrow. Ender doesn't hold practices anymore or else I'd send you to learn from him. Oh well. Your homework tonight is read up on military strategy. Got it?"

"Yeah." She liked Cornelia. She couldn't help it. She was like another older sister or something. Just not nearly as cynical.

"See you tomorrow. I've got school work to do and games to play." Cornelia stood up and took her tray over to the trash, even though there was still a bit of food on her tray. The nutritionist's voice said, "The amount of food you are given is based on your dietary needs and-"

"Oh shut up." She flicked off the nutritionist. "You give me too much food and have been giving me too much ever since I got here."

Nyx gaped. While she swore as much as the other kids here and made plenty of rude gestures at people, she never flicked off adults. Impressive. And a bit insubordinate. But they did give way too much food. She couldn't blame Cornelia.

"What books should I start with?" She thought. "I could start from the earliest and go to the latest. I wonder if you can play chess on your desk. That would be very helpful. I'll get Colin and Nathan to study with me. If I can tear them away from the Fantasy Game. Telling them that it's so the adults can analyze our minds didn't work, even though it's true." She rolled her eyes. She played it only so they didn't go crazy because she wasn't playing it. But she didn't trust them. They had already proven themselves to be liars. Besides, it bored her.

But now she was up to three friends. Things were looking up. She stood up and dumped her tray into the trash, ignoring the nutritionist. Nyx dashed out of the cafeteria to find Nathan and Colin. In the hallway she almost crashed into the two of them going to dinner after their showers.

"Guess what? I met another girl. And she's going to teach me stuff," she said excitedly. "I'm going to learn how to fight in the Battle Room from her tomorrow during free time. She wanted to send me to Ender's practice group but it was disbanded." She rambled on like this for a few minutes. Colin and Nathan stared at her blankly.

"Could you repeat that more slowly? And would this girl be interested in teaching us too? We all know how hopeless Nathan is with a gun in his hand." Colin grinned and grabbed Nathan in a headlock. Nathan the prisoner grinned sheepishly.

"I can't help it. I can't really aim. But would she teach us? Having at least a decent aim would really help."

"Yeah, I bet she would. She's nice. Her name is Cornelia. And if you guys want her to help you too, I bet you're going to have to study as hard as me." Nyx mock glared at them.

"Study what? How to shoot some bloody bastard like his-" Colin nodded at Nathan's head. "Brother? No offence or anything, Nate. You know he's unbearable."

"Yes. Sometimes it's hard to believe we have identical DNA. But will she really help all of us?"

Nyx sighed. Boys. It took forever to get a point through their heads.

"Yes, yes, I think she will. Stop worrying. There's no reason to. But don't tell your brother."

Nate looked a bit surprised. He did talk to his brother about many things, even though they hadn't spoken for the first week, and he hadn't been considering not telling him.

"Why not? Oh wait…" he thought about it for a few seconds. "That would give him the same advantage as us. I won't tell him. He'll find out anyway. We can't keep secrets from each other very long."

"Why not?" asked Colin.

"I don't know. Somehow we always know what the other is doing. Not completely and not with too much detail, but when he found our dad's algebra book and was teaching himself it, I knew and learned it too, at first from him and then on my own. I learned faster than Erik too. It became a race, who could do a linear equation faster. Then Mom snatched the book." He smiled reminiscently.

"How on earth do you do that? Is it because you're twins?" Nyx asked. She had never heard of such a thing before. Even when Kayla was making up fantasy stories and telling them to her.

Nate shrugged. He didn't know.


End file.
